Dev Patel successfully broke up a knife fight in Adelaide, Australia on Monday, a representative for the Oscar nominee, who lives in Australia, confirmed in a statement to Variety.
According to the country’s 7News, a man and a woman were fighting in the street and in a convenience store when the man was stabbed in the chest. He is expected to survive.
“We can confirm that last night, in Adelaide, Dev Patel and his friends witnessed a violent altercation that was already in progress outside of a convenience store,” the actor’s representative said.
“Dev acted on his natural instinct to try and de-escalate the situation and break up the fight. The group was thankfully successful in doing so and they remained on site to ensure that the police and eventually the ambulance arrived.”
The statement from Patel’s team said “there are no heroes in this situation and sadly this specific incident highlights a larger systemic issue of marginalized members of society not being treated with the dignity and respect they deserve.”
“The hope is that the same level of media attention this story is receiving (solely because Dev, as a famous person, was involved) can be a catalyst for lawmakers to be compassionate in determining long-term solutions to help not only the individuals who were involved but the community at large,” the statement concluded.
Variety has reached out to local police in Adelaide, Australia for additional comment on the incident.
Patel has been on a small acting hiatus since fronting David Lowery’s acclaimed fantasy indie “The Green Knight” last year during the pandemic.
His Netflix-backed directorial debut “Monkey Man” is currently in post-production, and he’s also set to star opposite Benedict Cumberbatch and Ralph Fiennes in Wes Anderson’s “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” also backed by Netflix.